Hooray for the solid scores 😀 It’s been an awesome Ludum Dare, and we all made some great games! I’ll make my post mortem here short.

Fugitive Shift Post-Mortem

What is this

Fugitive Shift is a game about three prisoners in a sort of abstract world working together to escape. It plays like a sort of top down stealth game, where you may command each fugitive with mouse clicks. It is probably more of a puzzle game, however.

What I did wrong

Okay, the idea was ambitious. It was my best idea though, so I just stuck with it. It ended up making the game pretty complicated when it was released. Level-based games are what seem to be much more time-consuming for compo. Speaking of that, this game almost played out like my LD 33 entry, Hymn of the Sages. It was a slightly similar stealth game that I had to rush making levels for. I learned from that and tried to make the levels for Fugitive Shift more meaningful without spending too much time on them. I was able to finish faster than before, as Hymn of the Sages was a Jam entry. Finally, the main mistake I made was not getting enough playtesting in before releasing. Some parts of the game were unclear and difficult, and I wish to better them. It shows when you get a low score on theme, because people probably don’t make it past the first level where there’s no shapeshifting.

What I did better

Time management was something I held very importantly over the days of development. I had planned out what I needed to get made on many sticky notes. I wrote out my schedule. These are things I was too lazy to try before, and it’s something that I’ve learned can really help with the short amount of time. GUI is looking good too, thanks to Unity 5’s great UI system. I just needed more time for the menu screen. Something I’ve never done before is dialogue. I spent the final hour writing dialogue for the characters, so they would explain mechanics a bit. I am happy with that first step of mine.

If you’re interested, check out the development timelapse HERE

That’s all I really need to say about Fugitive Shift. I thank everyone who’s rated and given feedback, I really appreciate all of your pointers! I can hopefully make an improved version later on. Thanks for reading, see you next time! 😀